Analysing how betting companies are impacting the esports sponsorship landscape

It should come as no surprise that betting companies have identified opportunities in the esports market as it continues to experience rapid growth.

As a result, bookmakers — endemic and non-endemic — are rapidly changing the sponsorship landscape, similarly to how betting partnerships now dominate most traditional European sports.

Within traditional sports, there are ongoing debates as to how appropriate betting sponsorships are, with countries like the UK bringing in multiple advertising restrictions limiting adverts to around match times (which was itself only allowed to protect sport funding) and even limiting who can appear in them. This has created minimal allowances for betting companies to advertise around sports. Nevertheless, the sports betting sector does create valuable sponsorship opportunities for many sports clubs.

In esports, the international scale of competitive gaming tournaments is likely to make gambling sponsorships much more complicated as time goes on, with legalities varying on a country-to-country basis.

The esports betting ecosystem has already seen instances of uncertainty. Betting company GG Bet dropped its sponsorship of Heroic after the Esports Integrity Commission banned a CS:GO coach for integrity issues last year.

With iGaming (the industry’s preferred terminology for online gambling) companies moving into the sponsorship market, esports has seen a dramatic uplift in commercial revenues. This could also be a sign of the wider public perception of competitive gaming changing, with more people taking the scene seriously.

Source: https://esportsinsider.com/2022/05/analysing-how-betting-companies-are-impacting-the-esports-sponsorship-landscape/